Two Worlds II - Review @ GameBanshee

August 6th, 2012, 17:17

I got the "velvet" edition very cheap on Steam, and tried to enjoy it. I really wanted to. I got off the tutorial island and realized I just didn't care why I was doing what I was doing, and couldn't find the motivation to continue.

30% of my lack of motivation was the clunkiness of the graphics/controls. 30% was the horrible voice acting. 30% was that I really didn't care that my sister was kidnapped (which was the whole point of the story) because the game did ZERO character building before she was kidnapped. 10% because I found myself obsessively micromanaging materials in my inventory and upgrading items, which on its surface sounds OK, but then you realize you have another 100hours of gameplay to go…

You almost need to have OCD for the crafting system. Same with the spell system. I really enjoyed it, but it definitely isn't for everyone. The sister thing is stupid, but there was a nice and fun storyline with a romantic interest that happens mid-game. Too bad. They should have had more with orc girl too. They started a story there and just dropped it with no explanation.

As usual, for large commercial RPG titles the main issues are about Quest/Mission design and Enjoyable well designed combat mechanics. Most companies can get most of the other aspects/components to be pretty good or even great, but those two aspects usually lack, all the time.

It boggles to think why these Game Producers, Creative Leads, Lead Designers constantly forego the development of these design components in such a heavy favor for the others. Imagine if Skyrim pushed another even %5 (more would be better of course)of their resources towards better quest design aka KOTOR 1 & 2, Fallout 1&2, Planescape, Arcanum or even Deus Ex 1 and Deus Ex HR (which has some interesting quests and various solution paths). I t doesn't need to be a whole game based on those design concepts, but inspiration and some similar quest structures.

Any game can be made better by applying the principles of those greats in some regards.
And for combat, a few of the newer games have done if not a great job, certainly an adequate or even good job in some cases, for example ME, Fallout NV, and Deus Ex Hr. FOr the 1st and 3rd person games, as least take cues from those games as inspiration.

Thoughts?

-- To sum it up, I feel our space program ended up like this. "It's one small step for man. One giant leap for man kind. Oops I fell on my butt after that leap and can't get up anymore."

Definitely better than KOTOR (I hated the combat). I'd say the quests and combat were pretty good in HR, it was the exploration that got tiresome, and after a while the combat too, quite frankly. Mention the boss battle combat, and HR fails, though. The others you just mentioned I have zero experience with.